January brings a bright new year — and eight new Sunlight OpenGov Grants! These open-source projects and tools are opening up data and government information in innovative ways. Check them out below!

A $10,000 grant to Chesapeake Commons’Ashtracker.org, to create data input and processing tools to better integrate data (for use by the public) related to groundwater contamination from coal power plant waste.

A $17,000 grant for the Councilmatic 2.0 project, rebuilding open-source software for searching municipal legislation, plus some new plugins to extend the software.

A $2,033 grant to the FAA Beneficial Owner Database project, to create a database of owners of U.S.-flag aircraft using FAA data and publicly available sources.

To mRelief, a grant of $10,000 to build added capacity for a web tool that makes public services information and other data more useful to Chicagoans.

A $7,000 grant to OpenDisclosure Alabama, a project of Code for America, for a public demonstration publishing the available campaign finance datasets in the state of Alabama, as well as identifying gaps for further analysis.

For OpenElections Local, a grant of $10,000, to build a pipeline for gathering, analyzing and publishing election data, plus the creation of an API and user documentation.

A $10,000 grant to the Open WNC project of Carolina Public Press, to improve public data access in under-served communities in Appalachian North Carolina by developing institutional partnerships, creating a government data repository and training journalists and engaged members of the public.

To the Platform for Scalable Participatory Democracy project, a $10,000 grant to improve software infrastructure and integration for two open-source platforms for democratic organizing and citizen deliberation in local communities.